“Ay, bad luck to him!  Frenchman-like, he skulks into port the moment he sees an English bottom.”

“It might be well for us if we could follow him,” returned the man, shaking his head despondingly, “for we are getting into the end of a bay up here at the head of the lake, and it is uncertain whether we ever get out of it again!”

“Pooh, man, pooh!  We have plenty of sea room, and a good English hull beneath us.  We are no Johnny Crapauds to hide ourselves behind a point or a fort on account of a puff of wind.  Mind your helm, sir!”

The order was given on account of the menacing appearance of the approaching passage.  The Scud was now heading directly for the fore-foot of the Frenchman; and, the distance between the two vessels having diminished to a hundred yards, it was momentarily questionable if there was room to pass.

“Port, sir, port,” shouted Cap.  “Port your helm and pass astern!”

The crew of the Frenchman were seen assembling to windward, and a few muskets were pointed, as if to order the people of the Scud to keep off.  Gesticulations were observed, but the sea was too wild and menacing to admit of the ordinary expedients of war.  The water was dripping from the muzzles of two or three light guns on board the ship, but no one thought of loosening them for service in such a tempest.  Her black sides, as they emerged from a wave, glistened and seemed to frown; but the wind howled through her rigging, whistling the thousand notes of a ship; and the hails and cries that escape a Frenchman with so much readiness were inaudible.

“Let him halloo himself hoarse!” growled Cap.  “This is no weather to whisper secrets in.  Port, sir, port!”

The man at the helm obeyed, and the next send of the sea drove the Scud down upon the quarter of the ship, so near her that the old mariner himself recoiled a step, in a vague expectation that, at the next surge ahead, she would drive bows foremost directly into the planks of the other vessel.  But this was not to be:  rising from the crouching posture she had taken, like a panther about to leap, the cutter dashed onward, and at the next instant she was glancing past the stern of her enemy, just clearing the end of her spanker-boom with her own lower yard.

The young Frenchman who commanded the Montcalm leaped on the taffrail; and, with that high-toned courtesy which relieves even the worst acts of his countrymen, he raised his cap and smiled a salutation as the Scud shot past.  There were bonhomie and good taste in this act of courtesy, when circumstances allowed of no other communications; but they were lost on Cap, who, with an instinct quite as true to his race, shook his fist menacingly, and muttered to himself, —­

“Ay, ay, it’s d——­d lucky for you I’ve no armament on board here, or I’d send you in to get new cabin-windows fitted.  Sergeant, he’s a humbug.”